The Aguilar sisters (Asunción Aguilar Caté and Felipita Aguilar Garcia) produced exceptional Black-on-cream typology traditional pottery jars and sold them to tourists passing through the pueblo on The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway train that stopped at the pueblo daily. Around 1910, sales began to drop and the sisters mentioned that to the trader at the Santo Domingo Trading Post. He suggested that they experiment with different ways of decorating their pottery. They accepted his advice and developed new styles of decorating: one was predominately red and black with white outlining; the other was predominately black with thin white outlining.

Asunción Aguilar Caté seemed to prefer the style using black and red, such as this one. The contrast of these two strong colors, superimposed on the traditional Santo Domingo cream slip, produced a bold visual statement. The new creations apparently were not immediately popular. Within a few years, when the sisters ceased making pottery because of advanced age, they had created a new style that has never been seriously taken up by any other potters except on an occasional basis. Santana Melchor produced a few in the mid-1900s and Robert Tenorio produced some late in the 1900s.

In this jar, the artisan used a combination of the Black-on-cream style and the black and red style she had developed. The combination of the two styles is rather unusual and enormously striking. She decorated the neck with simple black lines expanding outward from black parallel lines over a cream background. The mid-body of the vessel features strong brick-red geometric elements, outlined by a cream background and separated by black geometric elements. The lower body is traditional brick-red coloration. The underbody is slightly concave.

Condition: The jar is in extraordinary condition for its age. It is just an incredible work of art that is in remarkable condition. Two very minor abrasions in the brick red section were touched up professionally.